Intel has moved up the shipment date of its Tulsa processor to the third quarter of this year. Despite its Netburst roots (contrary to the Tom's Hardware article that pegs Tulsa as an ICM chip), this launch is very important for Intel since it delivers a more thermal-friendly and higher performing processor into a market segment that Intel has suffered in for quite some time.

The dual-core, Hyper-Threaded Tulsa will be enabled by a high-speed front-side bus, but more importantly will be armed with a whopping 16 MB of shared on-die cache. Wow, that's a lot of cache! Plus, each core still has its own L2 cache. I could actually boot one of my entire Linux distributions out of cache! I could run my entire Web server, out of cache! I could … Well, the possibilities are endless.

The beefier memory subsystem should allow Intel to mitigate much if not all of the large performance gap that the giant has suffered in the 4P-8P space.

The semiconductor manufacturer is expected to evolve the Tulsa (Xeon) processor into a quad-core component within a year, and replace the cores with its Core Micro-architecture components.

So, Geeks, is this chip just a Netburst–based benchmark loser? Could Intel finally be making a complete comeback and win the majority of benchmarks in every market segment? And if so, why didn't Dell stay in the Intel-only camp with this chip only a couple of months away from being in its hands? Will Opteron decimate this chip, and send Intel running back to the drawing board?

The dual-core, Hyper-Threaded Tulsa [will have] 16 MB of [L3] cache! Plus, each core still has its own L2 cache.

&gt &gt I agree. It is obvious (to me) that Intel's continuing to address the strength of the actually pretty compelling Netburst architecture with sufficient real-estate dedicated to cache, to keep the cores working efficiently. Scalability is the key.

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[Intel plans to] evolve to a quad-core component within a year, and replace the cores with its Core Micro-architecture components.

&gt &gt Interesting move, if true. I continue to wonder whether Intel might be losing a real opportunity to push hyperthreading to a level where it too becomes a compelling performance boost. Consider: as the prospect – the very real prospect – of having one's code run on a machine sporting certainly hundreds and possibly thousands of processing threads comes ever closer, won't the 'Hyperthreading on Steroids' technology fit into that like hand-in-glove? I think it would, especially if Intel were to take a significant fraction of the core area and dedicate it to 4-way parallel math. Doing this could result in nearly stall-free hyperthreading at the 4-thread level, given the statistics of instruction execution.

&gt &gt We shall see. HT is probably like the mythical Phoenix. Certain to rise from the ashes of defeat, again and again.

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So, Geeks, is this chip just a Netburst–based benchmark loser?

&gt &gt Nope. It is a test-bed for what is probably a huge piece of silicon, a test-bed for 65 nanometer caches, a test-bed for resolving in silicon the downside issues afforded by the shared-bus construct underlying all Intel CPUs. It may well also prove to be a compelling architecture for 'whole-chip-to-65nm', especially as there will be a size-shrink that could be partially leveraged with a 3rd and 4th (or 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th) set of cores. That's what huge L3 caches are for.__________________

Could Intel finally be making a complete comeback and win the majority of benchmarks in every market segment?

&gt &gt Very likely. I think they've just about had enough of the bad press that they've EARNED by having an “also-ran” chip architecture for so long. At least in the “Way Back Machine” of the 1980's and early 1990's, AMD's chips were highly touted, and didn't really deliver. A safety for Intel: they could always market around the little AMD corvettes, pointing at trend graphs, benchmarks, and MegaHurts.

&gt &gt Then AMD changed the playing field, starting with the Athlon. Oh, Intel has more-or-less stayed in the race (hell, there are only 2 significant X86 players, even today 2/3 of a decade later). But in the intervening 6 years, AMD has made its mark and reputation – which is now known by the business community. And they're not “afraid” of any downside from buying non-Intel.

&gt &gt So, Intel has a row or two to hoe.__________________

And if so, why didn't Dell stay in the Intel-only camp with this chip only a couple of months away from being in its hands?

&gt &gt Dell was alerted probably months in advance that Intel was going to go to a straight, “unimpeachable” flat-pricing structure. They've long enjoyed the extra profit margin afforded by their nepharious and cozy relationship with Intel, as Intel's #1 chip buyer. Well… in order to force Intel's hand, they're defecting [only on paper, it seems] to AMD's product line.

&gt &gt It has, and will get concessions out of Intel. It has, and will get Intel to push out significantly higher performance silicon at top rate. It has, and will cause Intel's profit margin to be shaved thinner, and Intel's stock price to drop accordingly. But that's OK. Intel's health as a firm won't be impacted, and it will all be good for us consumers.

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Will Opteron decimate this chip, and send Intel running back to the drawing board?

&gt &gt Nope. Intel won't run BACK to the drawing board, because in my humble opinion they have already STAFFED UP the drawing board bull-pen. There are a lot of designers working on the successors-to-the-successors of these fabulous chips.

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– by GoatGuy

16meg cash(11:52pm EST Thu Jun 15 2006)I don't see the new chip surpasing amd on its size matters lorels ,just look at sun microsystems chips large ass cash but even they are switcing to amd – by ichigo kun

When AMD goes to REV G the die size goes up 20%, and when you compare dual to single core, obviously die size +/- doubles, so AMD is getting a lot less chips per wafer. I suspect we will see few if any 1 meg cache consumer chips – everything 1 meg to the Opteron side I expect.

Netburst has always been about bandwidth, or lack there of actually.

In non memory dependant benches netburst has always held it's own, so I guess the question is does 16 megs L3, + 2 megs L2 per cor get it done?

I have to “assume” that Intel has massively massaged their pre-fetch code to take advantage of this.

That would be the Xeon MP market. Not smalltime-servers-for-regular-joes, but not bigtime either, although IBM manages to produce some pretty big servers on Xeon MP.

“I agree.”

It was a fact, not an opinion.

“Interesting move, if true. I continue to wonder whether Intel might be losing a real opportunity to push hyperthreading to a level where it too becomes a compelling performance boost. Consider: as the prospect – the very real prospect – of having one's code run on a machine sporting certainly hundreds and possibly thousands of processing threads comes ever closer, won't the 'Hyperthreading on Steroids' technology fit into that like hand-in-glove? I think it would, especially if Intel were to take a significant fraction of the core area and dedicate it to 4-way parallel math. Doing this could result in nearly stall-free hyperthreading at the 4-thread level, given the statistics of instruction execution.”

…and what is your knowledge of such things?

“We shall see. HT is probably like the mythical Phoenix. Certain to rise from the ashes of defeat, again and again.”

SMT is a sensible strategy.

And now I'm bored. – by Baaah

Good to hear from Goatguy(4:53pm EST Fri Jun 16 2006)A more informed and unbiased geek.com poster does not exist. The only reason I ever started coming here was because of him. Good to see you back, as you can see the retards have begun to dominate the discussion.

—————————–

I'd be interested in knowing you opinion on all this dual/quad core stuff. I personally don't like this trend because you roughly double the chip size but for no where near double the performance. I work w/ a lot of multi-CPU designs (ARM9's, Tensilica's, and Strongarm's mostly) that handle lot's and lot's of packets for storage servers and routers. We've put as many as 7 CPU's on a two bus system. But it's always a game of diminishing returns. The more CPU's you add, the more you end up time sharing single instance resources (PCI host interfaces, shared mem, peripherals, bridges, your router port, etc). You never get as much performance back as you spent in area especially since you longer wire runs usually force you to lower your max clock speed as well. This clock speed hit alone pretty much garuntees a less then 2x increase in work and that's if you didn't share anything.

Multi-box supercomputers (really better named compute clusters) have the same problem, go over a sweat spot number of CPU box's and your work done per clock actually starts going down because they are all wasting so many cycles communicating and swapping data with each other (depending on what problem you are solving).

A good example AMD's flagship FX-60 which is two FX-55 cores running at a slower frequency. The FX-60 probably consumes nearly twice the area/cost of a FX-55 (CPU gates dominate the gate counts) but the FX-60 only outbenchmarks the FX-55 by a modest 5%-10% for most non-custom applications. In fact you can overclock an FX-55 more then an FX-60 and get very similar performance.

~2x the cost, only 5%-10% the performance pick up, it just doesn't seem like a lot a value per clock cycle to me. certainly not worth the excitement it generates…. – by EE

give me 256mb of cache(5:28pm EST Fri Jun 16 2006)NOW! – by blah

Good to hear from Goatguy and EE(7:27pm EST Fri Jun 16 2006)Just want to say that your thoughtful and informative posts are appreciated, and one of the biggest reasons I continue to come back to the chipgeek section regularly. Please don't let the trolls discourage you. – by Robert

posts are terrible(10:14pm EST Fri Jun 16 2006)I think its time geek.com have registration and the posts are moderated. We need to have reasonable discussion and intelligent posters like goatguy, ee etc. – by pls_moderate_posts

its a fake goat post(10:17pm EST Fri Jun 16 2006)Goatguy called netburst “compelling architecture” and that Tulsa will win majority of benchmarks against opteron mp. Either GG has an inside source at intel and has benchmarked tulsa or the above post is not by GG. – by is_it_goat

Tigerton(10:20pm EST Fri Jun 16 2006)[Intel plans to] evolve to a quad-core component within a year, and replace the cores with its Core Micro-architecture components.

That's the chip called Tigerton. There is no details about chip except that it replaced whitefield which was supposed to be quad core csi imc and 16mb L2 cache. I think Tigerton will have only 16MB L2 cache and Quad Independent Bus?

I guess 45nm shrink should produce single die quad core for intel and nehelam core should have csi and imc. – by Tigerton_rulez

AMD's server market?(11:03pm EST Fri Jun 16 2006)I think CD (Charles Demerjian) at The Inquirer is feeling the 1MB pinch also (ouch!).. After the Dell win, now AMD had to resort to this.. LOL

I guess AMD expects Dell won't be taking their (more expensive) Opterons in big volume. They knew after all..

Probably AMD is now concentrating in the 512KB desktop processors after seeing how the server/workstation market slow downs. They also have to compete with Intels (volume and price) as well… – by Core Duo

Robert(4:06am EST Sat Jun 17 2006)LOL. Goatguy and EE posts thoughtful and informative? The only thought is how to bullshit the most effectively. What you are really saying is that you are not informed and can't tell the difference. Think about it? – by Blind leading blind

EE and Goatguy's posts(9:49am EST Sat Jun 17 2006)maybe bullshit but they are a lot more interesting than the other posts including yours. If they and a few more like them didn't post I would never look at the comments section, fortunatly as they do, I do. – by A Brit

Fanboys(10:53pm EST Sat Jun 17 2006)Honestly. Intel, AMD are enormous, multi-billion $$ companies, run by middle-aged men in grey suits. It's all extremely boring. What sort of lacklife would actually want to be a “fan” or even “supporter” of either? Jesus. Watch a sport or something, if you're really desperate to offer your invaluable allegiance.

Same with Sony / Microsoft fans. Is the world so uselessly boring now that corporations are all we have to get excited about? – by Greenaum